


Breathe Again

by Krasimer



Series: All Your Tragedies [3]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: American Wizards, And Men in the 20s couldn't be together publicly, Being gay in the 1920s, Canon Compliant, Except it is canon but canon is stupid., M/M, Memories, Memory Alteration, Muggles and Wizards can't marry, No-Maj is a stupid term and I refuse to allow it to be used, Obliviation, So I have a recipe for sadness, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-07 03:54:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8781913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/Krasimer
Summary: He remembered an odd hairstyle, dark eyes and sharp cheeks and a few days worth of stubble and the feeling of lips pressed to his own and-He remembered a name."Percival Graves," Daniel said it out loud, trying to cement it into his reality. "I am going to find out who you are, Percival Graves. Just you watch me."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers in the end notes.

The house was empty when he got in.

His hair was dripping and his jacket was near ruined and his shoes made an unsettlingly wet noise when he took a step. His journalist identification card was wet but legible, "Daniel Lewis Razner" written in dark ink on one side. His hair was dark, a smattering of gray running through it, and he sighed as he pulled off his coat, his jacket, undid his collar and pulled his tie loose. 

For a moment, he half expected a pair of hands to come up and pull his tie out of his collar, nudge the first button open.

After a moment, he shook his head. 

Guys like him weren't supposed to exist, weren't natural. Daniel snorted, slicking back his hair with one hand and sighing. The room around him felt empty, too empty, and he didn't know why. There was someone-

Supposed to be someone?

No, he thought as he toed off his sopping wet shoes, cringing at the squelch of protest they made as he did. There wasn't supposed to be anyone. 

Guys like him never had anyone.

'Too attached to the job,' he told anyone who asked. 'Ain't got time to settle, no girl's gonna want to stay with a guy who's never home. 'Sides,' he remembered chuckling to his buddies. 'Gives you fellas a chance, right?'

There had been some good natured ribbing and then the matter had been dropped and now the world felt too empty, somehow.

Daniel wandered into his kitchen, his slipper firmly on his feet and his trousers in his hands as he set the kettle to boil. Every inch of him felt frozen, cold and useless and he wanted warmth. Another moment of hands, an almost sort of memory, and he went to reflexively lean into them. 

A flare of blue light behind his eyelids made him snap to attention, looking around almost frantically to see if there were flames. 

Instead, the undamaged kitchen greeted him. The small table with the wooden chairs his father had built, the plainly papered walls...It seemed completely empty. Both chairs were pulled out and Daniel frowned at that for a moment before he walked over to the one he hadn't used, had _never_ used. He put his hands on the back of it, staring down at it as if the whorls in the wood could give him answers, then slowly pushed it back into place.

The chair went easily.

For some reason, he'd half expected it to resist, the legs sticking to the floor in some strange show of devotion to whoever had sat there at one point. Daniel frowned, backing away slowly and turning out of the room to the bathroom. 

On the counter was another mystery, a brand of cologne he'd never worn, could never afford. 

He picked it up in one hand, his other going behind him to lay his sopping trousers over the edge of the bath. The bottle was a hefty thing, made of glass and oddly warm in his hand. Daniel frowned at it, popping the lid off and sniffing cautiously. It smelled familiar, a scent he knew from _somewhere_ , faint and remarkably memorable for all the non-remembering he was doing. There was something about it that made a curl of happiness find its way into his gut. Somehow, that scent meant happiness and safety. 

_'I'm done with you,'_ a voice whispered in his memory. _'That you could have thought we were anything serious, what were you thinking?'_

Daniel keened quietly, almost dropping the bottle to the floor in his haste to set it down. There were definitely memories there, yes, but remembering them was painful and he-

He didn't want to.

There was a pain in them, pain beyond simply trying to remember and he didn't want to feel that. Not when he was so cold and so empty and so alone in his house. There was something missing, something he couldn't quite put his finger on, but there was definitely something missing and he wanted it back. Whatever it was, whoever it was, he wanted that elusive memory back. The odd feeling in his chest-

The pulled out chair.

He closed his eyes, his fingers curling tightly on the edge of the sink as he tried to breathe. The chair, the second towel, the cologne he would never have bought or worn, the slightly peppery scent to it, the feeling of safety it gave him.

The blue light that shone, half of New York looking like it had been lit from within.

An earlier sort of thing, a police officer spotting him in an alleyway with...With...With someone. The memories stopped there, empty and lonely and missing, but there was someone. He remembered an odd hairstyle, dark eyes and sharp cheeks and a few days worth of stubble and the feeling of lips pressed to his own and-

He remembered a name.

"Percival Graves," Daniel said it out loud, trying to cement it into his reality. "I am going to find out who you are, Percival Graves. Just you watch me."

**Author's Note:**

> So I saw the perfect recipe for sadness. 
> 
> Percival Graves is a wizard and, presumably, Grindelwald (SPOILERS) polyjuiced to look like him. This means the real Percival Graves is alive somewhere. After the Obliviation-rain, I know the muggles forgot everything they saw. Since there were a lot of reporters on the scene when everything happened, I created an original character. My brain also appears to survive on sadness because it made me put an OC with a canon character. 
> 
> The reporter who was the real Percival Graves's lover. 
> 
> In my headcanon, PG is about to be found in his home, kept in a comatose state so that Grindelwald could keep him around and use him for polyjuice materials. The relationship between Percival and Daniel was broken off a year ago, when Grindelwald replaced Graves.  
> ...Probably no one really cares. I'll shut up now.


End file.
